Typing stealth: a review of the CODE Keyboard

Coding Horror designs a keyboard for those of us who never stop typing.

Two and a half years ago, I fell in love with a mechanical keyboard. It was comfortable to use but profoundly loud, to the point of being obnoxious. It was audible across rooms and through walls and into the night—not to me, with my headphones on, but to most living, breathing souls within a 50-yard radius.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror appears to know the dilemma of perpetual typists like myself. We love our mechanical keyboards with Cherry MX switches, but they sound off like so many M16 rifles. One of the leading features of his new CODE keyboard is that it is “quiet,” but it packs a handful of other quirks meant to streamline usage for heavy duty users.

The sound of Not Even Close To Silence

The keyboard is a pretty spare design, with translucent legends on the keys that allow individual-key backlights to shine through. The body is weighted to keep it from shifting around on your desk, and this one is hefty enough to stay put through minor earthquakes: the 87/88-key version is two pounds and the 104/105-key version we reviewed is 2.42 pounds.

A single microUSB-to-USB cord connects and powers the keyboard. My usual keyboard has two supplementary USB ports that I missed after swapping in the CODE keyboard.

Enlarge/ The USB cord threads most easily straight out the back, but a series of channels allow users to thread off to either side along the top edge or off the left or right side.

Atwood designed the CODE keyboard as the answer to all of the touch-screen typing we now do. Touch-screen keyboards have their place, but for an honest day’s worth of typing in the life of a writer, programmer, or even just a heavy-duty Internet user, capacitive glass (or even rubber domes or scissor switches) simply will not do.

The CODE keyboard uses Cherry MX Clear mechanical switches, which are stiff compared to the more common Cherry MX Blues and Browns. Because of this, the keyboard somewhat mimics the feel of a rubber dome keyboard like the ever-popular Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard.

Enlarge/ One of the Cherry MX Clear switches, accompanied by the individual backlight bulb for the key.

But the mechanical switches are superior to the rubber dome switches in two ways. First, they activate before they are pressed all the way down (you can feel a tactile bump at this actuation point). Your finger doesn’t have to “bottom out” the key in its well in order to get the key press to register.

Second, they are less susceptible to aging and do not become harder to strike over time as soon as rubber dome switches do. The average lifespan of rubber domes are around five million presses, while mechanical switches go 10-20 million. If the switches are used right, a keyboard like this should, in theory, both prevent fatigue and sustain a longer lifespan than a cheaper rubber dome keyboard.

I am now a longtime user of a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches, an Adesso MKB-135B that won my heart after it appeared in a video I did about keyboards a couple of years ago. It’s not the fanciest of models and is branded a “gaming” keyboard when, in fact, it uses switches that are actually considered optimal for typing as opposed to gaming (Cherry MX Browns are the reigning champs there, though these are all matters of preference more than anything).

To my Blue-accustomed hands, the Clears felt pretty stiff. At first this seemed like a downside, surely it would result in more fatigue than usual. But a problem I often have with my Blues keyboard is that I don’t type delicately enough to distinguish between the activation point and bottoming out. Half the time I’m hammering away and I strike the key all the way down and move on. Sometimes I can maintain the featherlike touch required to take full advantage, but it’s a balance that I am sometimes too impassioned about pants or Google+ to maintain.

Enlarge/ A full bottoming-out depression (front) versus an activation depression (behind) on the CODE keyboard.

The stiffer switches of the Clears do a better job at preventing me from bottoming out. I worry that over time my fingers will work up enough enthusiasm to start abusing these switches just as badly as they do my Blues, but for the time being I’m maintaining a healthy balance of pressure.

The real downside to Cherry MX Blues is their volume. They are incredibly, incredibly loud, totally not suitable for an office or really any space that doesn’t resemble a bunker. Sources who prefer to remain nameless tell me my usual keyboard can be heard from outside my apartment. This may play a role in why rubber dome keyboards proliferate in offices over mechanical or even scissor-switch keyboards.

Cherry MX Clear switches, on the other hand, have a tactile bump, but they are not “clicky” like the Blues or Browns. The Clears even sound like a rubber dome keyboard.

The CODE keyboard version we have is part of Atwood’s first production run, so problems are to be expected to an extent. When I removed the keyboard from the box, I noticed that a thin metal hook under the backspace key had come undone, leading the key to be partially detached and rattle when I pressed it. Reseating that metal hook took a solid 20 minutes of struggling with a spudger and the included key-puller before everything was in place.

The key puller is a nice inclusion, as it makes the keyboard much easier to disassemble and clean. This process otherwise involves prying the keys off their switches to somewhat unpredictable results.

One of the features of the keyboard is six-key rollover (press six keys simultaneously and they will all register). This doesn’t match the 10-key rollover of some gaming models, but I didn’t run up against the limit in my typing experience.

The keyboard has a set of DIP switches on the back that once configured, allow you to switch the keyboard layout on the hardware level (instructions aren’t included for this, but you have Google and some thousands of support forums at hand). The keyboard also arranges its media keys differently: rather than being along the function row, they are the secondary functions of the Insert/Home/Page Up Cluster, with the Menu key functioning as the Fn key. This configuration is operable with one hand without a lot of strain.

At $149.99, the CODE keyboard is on the expensive side for a mechanical model (my own was around $80; Das Keyboards are $120-130; keyboards with even more offbeat switches like Topres can run upwards of $200). This isn’t the new Keyboard Everyone Needs, but its considered design touches and features will no doubt meet the approval of a certain cadre of very, very active typists.